My Favorite Detective Stories

Dale Pugh graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, served as an officer in the Marine Corps, and is a Vietnam Era veteran. He was appointed a Special Agent of the FBI serving as a Soviet Counter-Intelligence Officer in Washington, D.C. He has served as Director of Security for both Pizza Hut and Quiznos, and he created the investigations department for the Rocky Mountain Credit Card System. Dale is a former Deputy District Attorney and personal injury attorney. He has conducted 181 criminal and civil jury trials. He has also taught Forensic Science and 4th Amendment law at local colleges. Dale earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, a Master's Degree in Strategic Intelligence from the National Intelligence College, and a Master's Degree in Forensic Science from The George Washington University. He is the only licensed attorney and licensed private investigator in the state of Colorado. He is also a Certified Protection Professional and a Certified Fraud Examiner. Website: htt

Paul Rubin's career began in 1980 as the courts/police reporter for the Sierra Vista Herald/Bisbee Daily Review in southeast Arizona, and he spent most of his career as the senior reporter at the weekly Phoenix New Times, where he became one of Arizona’s most celebrated journalists. During his 27 years at New Times, he was selected as Arizona’s Journalist of the Year three times and was runner-up eight other years, including 2012--the year that the paper laid him off for economic reasons. He founded Paul Rubin Investigations founded in January 2016 after spending the previous three years with Rich Robertson’s R3 Investigations, a prominent Mesa-based firm. Paul also was the six-time winner of the Arizona Press Club’s Don Bolles Award for investigative reporting.

Prior to his career as a novelist, David Corbett worked as a private investigator for the firm of Palladino & Sutherland in San Francisco, and played a significant role in such headline litigations as The Peoples’ Temple Trial, the first Michael Jackson child molestation scandal, the Cotton Club Murder Case, and many others. •The Devil’s Redhead (nominee: Anthony and Barry Awards for Best First Novel) •Done for a Dime (NY Times Notable Book; Macavity Award nominee, Best Novel; named “one of the two or three best American crime novels I have ever read” by Patrick Anderson of the Washington Post) •Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, and named both one of the Top Ten Mysteries and Thrillers of 2007 by the Washington Post and a San Francisco Chronicle. Website: http://davidcorbett.com/ Don't forget to check out our Patreon. We've got some excellent patron exclusive stories ready for you at http://www.patreon.com/MyFavoriteDetectiveStories

Pat McGaha, a retired detective and street cop, joins us again for a 5th Monday session. He shares some incredible stories this week regarding the mix of politics and investigation from his experiences.

Today’s guest is Martin D. Yant. He is an award-winning journalist and a licensed private investigator specializing in Wrongful Convictions. He has a full-service investigations agency, Ace Investigations. He has written extensively with his 1991 book Presumed Guilty named by the Washington Post as one of the eight most important books on miscarriages of justice ever published. His investigations have been featured in Time Magazine and The New York Times. They have been highlighted on 48 hours, Dateline, Unsolved Mysteries and on the cable network channels of CNN, The Discovery Channel and also on the Canadian Broadcasting System.

Our guest today is Sheryl McCollum. With over 25 years of experience and education, Sheryl is a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department as well as the Director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, which is a collaboration between numerous colleges and universities around the country. This collaboration brings together researchers, practitioners, students, and the criminal justice community to develop new capabilities and works collectively to advance research, training, and techniques in solving cold cases such as Tu Pac Shakur Chandra Levy and Natalee Holloway.

Rachel McCarthy James lives in Lawrence, KS with her husband Jason. She studied creative writing at Hollins University, and her work has previously been featured in publications including Bitch, Broadly, and The New Inquiry. What makes Rachel a wonderful guest for this show is her research skills and persistence which led to Solving a Century Old Serial Killer Mystery, The Edgar nominated book The Man from the Train is her first book. She co-wrote with her father Bill James, whose name you might know from Michael Lewis's book and the Movie of the same name Moneyball starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. Rachel is my first amateur detective to come on the show and hopefully, she will not be my last.

Sheila Wysocki is a mother of two and an accomplished private detective. After solving her former roommate’s murder, a case that had gone cold for more than 25 years, Sheila devoted herself to detective work completely, founding the non-profit Without Warning: Fight Back. She uses this as an outlet for advocating for victims of crime. She is a licensed professional investigator, who will get to the truth no matter how long it takes. Her Podcast Without Warning should be next on your list. I'm hooked and I do this stuff for a living. She is widely known for what she does, having appeared on Anderson Cooper, Dateline, Katie Couric, Biography, ABC's 20/20, Crime Watch Daily, Criminal and numerous other podcasts. She was also featured in the Washington Post.

Joe retired as an Inspector from the Michigan State Police after 26 years. He also worked for more than 10 years in the banking and insurance sectors. Since 2005, he has owned and operated KMI Investigations, focusing on financial investigations. He is a CFE and author holding a BS in Accounting from Wayne State University, and a Masters in Public Administration from Eastern Michigan University. He is the author of several articles and the award-winning book “Getting the Truth” (2014) and is a much sought-after speaker on how to discover the real message, distinguishing truth from deception, and how to “sculpt” questions to get the truth. He is really reading between the lines.

Since 1989, Jerry Mitchell has been an investigative reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss. Jerry has unearthed documents, cajoled suspects and witnesses, and quietly pursued evidence in the nation’s notorious killings from the civil rights era. His work has helped put four Klansmen behind bars. For his work, Mitchell has received more than 30 national awards. In 2006, the Pulitzer Board named him a Pulitzer Prize finalist, praising him “for his relentless and masterly stories on the successful prosecution of a man accused of orchestrating the killing of three civil rights workers in 1964.” After winning the prestigious George Polk Award for a second time, Mitchell received a MacArthur “genius” grant — only the second investigative reporter to ever receive the $500,000 award.

Since 1986, Linda Sanderson has provided dedicated and effective defense investigation for indigent persons accused of crimes in one of California’s most litigious public defender offices. She provided defense investigation coverage on nearly all Richmond gang cases since 1990. As chief investigator since 2012, where she supervises eleven defense investigators, she overhauled the department’s investigation division into a highly dedicated, efficient and accomplished unit working alongside the attorney staff in a holistic team format.

Fred Mamoun is currently a Communications Officer at Yale University. Prior to joining Yale in 2017, Fred Mamoun worked for twenty years as an Investigative Journalist and as a television news Executive Producer & Producer. Fred spent his news career breaking original stories, managing TV news teams, and developing exclusive video and digital content for NBC News and Fox News. Fred’s work routinely generated national and international attention, won dozens of journalism awards including eight Emmy Awards, and changed multiple local, state and Federal laws. Fred spent three years on the Board of Directors for the Los Angeles Press Club, and four years teaching television news and investigative journalism at UCLA.

Shannon Sikes Mack is an active Law Enforcement Officer with 19 years of service. She holds the rank of Lieutenant in the Bossier Parish Sheriff's office in Louisiana where she oversees detectives in the criminal division. She first started her career in Shreveport, LA before joining the Sheriff's office. She worked with Rod Demery, a homicide detective in Shreveport and last year joined him on the Investigation Discovery Channel show Murder Chose Me. It is now in its second season. She is also known for the Bossier Doe case where she and her team combined the latest DNA testing methods with FaceBook to bring closure to a 34-year-old murder case of an unidentified teenager.

David Watts. Dave is a licensed private investigator specializing in fraud and business investigations. He started his career as a patrolman in Plainfield NJ in 1961, became a detective and then an investigator for the Union County Prosecutors office. In 1976, he and his wife started their Private investigations business. For over fifty years, Dave has traveled the country searching for the truth for high-powered corporate clients. He as written two books. Accidental PI: A Private Investigators 50-year search for the facts and a novel titled: Loose ends: Murder in the New Jersey Suburbs.

Dr. Ramsland holds graduate degrees in Forensic Psychology, Clinical Psychology, and Philosophy. She teaches Forensic Psychology at DeSales Univerisity in Pennsylvania She has written on the subjects of serial killers, crime scene investigations forensic science, mass murder and sex offenders. She assisted FBI Profiler John Douglas on his book, The Cases that Haunt Us And co-wrote with former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary, The Unknown Darkness

Family Orchard LLC was established by John F. Suggs in order to apply his expertise in genetic analysis, forensic research and investigation to the field of genetic genealogy where he assists “persons of unknown parentage” such as adult adoptees, sperm and egg donor’s adult children and others searching for their biological roots. In addition, using the same investigative methods, he has recently expanded his work portfolio to include assisting members of Law Enforcement in the solving of criminal cold cases. John is a pioneer in forensic and genetic genealogy, with over a dozen years of experience in finding and reuniting lost loved ones. John holds a BA in Political Science from Loyola Marymount University, an MS in Management and Systems from New York University and an MBA from Fordham University. His NYU Master’s Thesis was entitled: “Genetic Testing and Privacy: The Role of Anonymous Genetic Testing and Information Technology.”

My Favorite Detective Stories is a short form interview with investigators and investigative journalists where we tease out how they got started, why they wanted to become an investigator, what makes for a good investigation and most importantly, what their favorite detective stories are. Please subscribe with your favorite Podcast App. Pat McGaha is a great storyteller. A former decorated street cop and homicide detective from Shreveport, LA, Pat is also a prolific blogger where he weaves his years growing up before joining the Marines with his cop stories. He delivers the whodunits with a powerful emotional gut punch. His website True Stories by a Homicide Detective will keep you mesmerized with bite-sized blog posts and some real heavyweight stories https://patmcgaha.com/

James L. Trainum is retired from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. as the Violent Crimes Case Review Project Director- Detective from 2000-2010 James has been interviewed on the topic of interrogation and false confessions by The New Yorker, The New York Times, and National Public Radio. Trainum has also been quoted in the American Psychological Associations white paper on the topic of false confessions and in numerous other articles and editorials. He speaks at many conferences and other events to talk about the topic of false confessions and interrogation techniques. He is the author of How The Police Generate False Confessions: An Inside Look at the Interrogation room.

Scott is a Cybersecurity contributor to Fortune magazine, Connected World and also a guest-blogger on TripWire’s State of Security, IBM Big Data & Analytics, and writes for HP’s Business Value Exchange. In Hacked Again, Scott’s first book available now (www.hackedagain.com), he describes the reality of cyber threats and provides tips and techniques that will help protect you and your business interests from a devastating cybersecurity breach. Scott also sits on several cybersecurity advisory boards. https://www.amazon.com/Hacked-Again-Scott-N-Schober/dp/099690221X

Mark Fallon Author of Unjustifiable Means: The inside story of how the CIA, Pentagon, and the US Government conspired to torture. He spent more than 30 years in Government Service with 27 at NCIS, Naval Criminal Investigative Service and with Department of Homeland Security Fallon speaks publicly and writes extensively on the subjects of combatting terrorism, detainee treatment, and interrogation procedures https://www.amazon.com/Unjustifiable-Means-Pentagon-Government-Conspired/dp/1942872798/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8